My final music magazine consists of a front cover, a contents page and a two-page spread.

Before starting the construction of the media product, I did secondary research on other existing magazines from different genres so I could have knowledge of music magazines overall. I also analysed what made them successful and effective (using technical, written and symbolic codes). By looking at different magazines, I found out the basic conventions that magazines require.

After I did my research on existing magazines, I created a questionnaire to find out what my target marget wanted to see. The results I gathered showed that most of them wanted a music magazine based on the rock genre or anything similar (such as pop-punk and alternative) so I did further research and analysed existing magazines from this genre such as Kerrang!, Rocksound and Alternative Press (AP).

A convention that I used is how the models are dressed up. Most rock magazines have their models dressed up in casual, plain clothes which I followed in my magazine because it makes the band look more approachable and friendly towards their audience, compared to if the models were dressed up in ‘glamorous’ clothes.

With the masthead, I thought it was best to stick to convention. The convention is that the brand name is music/instrument related. I stuck to this convention because it is appropriate and effective since it makes it more catchy and meaningful to the reader.

I also followed the convention for the front cover headline. As you can see from the table above, most headlines are placed on the centre of the page, which is where it should be because if it was on the upper section of the page, it would cover the models’ face, and if it was on the lower part of the page, it wouldn’t be the first thing that the reader picks up on.

Another convention for front covers is the way the smaller articles are titled. Most magazines have long headings or a quote taken from the article. I chose to develop this convention by simply thinking of short, snappy sentences that create mystery but still keep the reader interested and make them want to read more.

Most music magazines, especially rock ones include posters which I stuck with because from my questionnaire, one of the questions was if they wanted posters included and the majority of them said yes, so sticking to this convention will make my product sell more.

I also stuck with some of the more basic conventions such as the barcode, issue number, date, and price since they are necessary.

I noticed is that the models used in the magazines differ from genre to genre. Most mainstream magazines (such as rap) used black males, pop magazines used white females, and, the majority of rock and metal used white males. To break this convention, I tried to mix different races and genders throughout the magazine. As you can see from the contents page, the model for one of the articles is a white female which we rarely see in rock magazines. I also challenged a convention by having an African male in my two-page spread as the featured band’s tour manager.For the contents page,

some of the evident conventions are the page numbers and the categories. I followed these conventions because they make the contents page more user-friendly, so information/articles are easier to find.

A convention I challenged on this media piece is the amount of text, pictures and the overall aesthetics. As you can see on the tables above, most contents pages have bigger or more text and pictures. I decided to keep my contents page simpler and less cluttered so it doesn’t look too messy or overwhelming.

I stuck to the layout that most magazines used for their own contents page because it is the most effective layout. The upper part is dedicated to the two-page spread because this is the article that this particular issue is trying to sell so it is placed where it will be the first thing that readers will see.

Similar to other contents pages, I decided to put an editor’s note section because it creates a connection between the reader and the editor, so it doesn’t seem like the page is just full of information.

For the two-page spread, one of the common feature is the columns. There isn’t a particular convention on how many columns are used but I decided to do four columns but with different categories/sections so that there isn’t too much too read so the readers don’t get bored when reading.

A convention I broke is the focus of the article. As you can see from above, most articles are focused on the lead singer since they are usually the ones who interact with fans the most. I challenged this convention because by now, most fans would be tired of just reading about the lead singer and not knowing anything about the under-appreciated band members.

A convention I stuck with is the presence of a pull quote in the article. I decided to use this convention because it gives readers a brief insight into the article if they don’t want to read the strapline. I also think that choosing an interesting pull quote will get more attention since people will want to read more.

Not all articles have a heading, subheading and strapline so I decided to develop from this and add all three in my two-page spread so that the reader have brief insights into the article without having to read all of the text.